Is hiring a second unit director a bad idea?

[Paul R Johnson]

With people giving you advice this good Ryan, why am I not surprised?

If you were a chef Ryan, and you opened the fridge and the only food had gone bad, and smelled - would you actually use it?

Some things you say Ryan would be funny if you didn't really believe them? You knew you had bad actors, but you went ahead and used them? That is a something I have never known a director or producer to say. If you have a choice between a poor product or no product - I'd not want to be known as the crap guy?

Have you considered maybe your friend did not mean you to take it this way? Either that or she is frankly a screw loose and her elevator doesn't go to the top floor.

I agree with Pete - you are only as good as your last project!

[Brian Drysdale]

The only reason to do a film with a poor cast is a technical exercise, you make it and move on. Learn what you can and make another film without looking back.

[Pete Cofrancesco]

Originally Posted by Paul R Johnson

With people giving you advice this good Ryan, why am I not surprised?

If you were a chef Ryan, and you opened the fridge and the only food had gone bad, and smelled - would you actually use it?

Some things you say Ryan would be funny if you didn't really believe them? You knew you had bad actors, but you went ahead and used them? That is a something I have never known a director or producer to say. If you have a choice between a poor product or no product - I'd not want to be known as the crap guy?

Have you considered maybe your friend did not mean you to take it this way? Either that or she is frankly a screw loose and her elevator doesn't go to the top floor.

I agree with Pete - you are only as good as your last project!

Funny I also had a food analogy in mind, but I was thinking if you are a bad cook will buying better quality ingredients make you a better cook? Most of Ryan topics are really about him trying work around his inability to direct, spending years planning every detail because he can't improvise on set, hiring a co-director because he isn't good at directing actors... I could go on but we are really beating a dead horse. None of what we are saying is going to have any impact.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh yes, from now on I am only picking actors I feel will do well in the parts.

But as for the whole, actors and crew will only want to work with me if they have a prior personal relationship with me, that is one one thing I will have to work around and find an alternate solution for then. There are other filmmakers I worked for that have had strangers that they have had no past relationships work with them before on their projects, so I felt it was possible. For example, I was told before that if I want enough actors to choose from that are good, that I should be auditioning 50 people for each major role. If that's true, I don't have time to build personal relationships with over 50 people and what filmmaker does. Best just do casting calls with lots of actors and crew and pick people even if I never worked with them before, I figure.

[Greg Miller]

Originally Posted by Pete Cofrancesco

Find something that matches that. Do it for our sake so we don't have to read these type of threads.

As long as some small group of people is willing to keep responding to the same questions over and over again, Ryan is going to keep asking the same questions over and over again. My theory (as I've mentioned before) is that Ryan would rather talk endlessly about making his dream movie, rather than take advice on what to do instead. At this point he seems to be more of a movie groupie, rather than an actual movie maker. And the consensus seems to be that he's not making any positive progress toward becoming the latter.

[Ryan Elder]

You're right I shouldn't have asked the same question again. From now on if I would like advice on a particular part of filmmaking I will ask about that but stick to new areas and only ask questions in new areas and try not to repeat myself.

[Donald McPherson]

How's the color grading on your phone going on your other job? Have you walked out yet? Because if this goes wrong it will reflect on being a director or anything else. People remember mistakes more than good work.

[Ryan Elder]

It's going a little better now because I have gotten use to the grading now. I wanted to take the phone home so I could put the footage on my computer then put it back on the phone, but the phone has some sort of security on which I cannot do that, so I am stuck with it I guess.

I asked them how they like the grading so far, and they said it was good and they seem to like it so not sure if that is good or bad. But it's starting to look someone better now that I have gotten use to working it. Not as good as it could be on a computer though of course. Well it's a documentary project and those usually do not have big cinematic color anyway, so not sure if anyone will notice a more simpler grade since documentaries tend to have them anyway? I wanted to go beyond that though and make it the best I could, but the phone security is preventing me.

[Brian Drysdale]

I've shot broadcast programmes that had no or very little colour grading, it was all done in the camera, because it just wasn't an option in post production unless they were rescuing a scene because the white balance was wrong.

One of the rules is that the customer is always right, even when they're wrong. If they can't tell the difference they may be unaware that there higher levels, or it could be a case that it meets their needs, which are basic in nature for these productions.

Colour grading in documentaries varies from little to none to the production being graded to the highest levels for high end flagship documentaries. This web series sounds like it's at the lower end of the spectrum

[Paul R Johnson]

I think grading for video is very much like mastering is for audio recording, and the real purpose is now surrounded by hype and the idea seems to be that anyone can master, on equipment designed for recording. So somebody sits in their studio and produces a masterpiece. Traditionally they then gave this to a different person who improves it for the general public. Grading is the same mysterious subject.

The trouble is that very often the people who 'master' are the same people who recorded it. So you finish your project and it's perfect. You then do more things to it, on the same system, on the same speakers with the same set of ears and the reality is you simply slap on a few presets that the internet says are flavour of the month excellence tools. Exactly the same with grading. It's something you MUST do, but most of the decisions were done in the edit. You already balanced the shots by adjusting the ones on a dull day to match better the ones on a sunny day and then these get matched against inside shots. You do this in the edit, or at least, I do. Then we could give it to somebody else to do on their properly calibrated monitor with much better contrast ratio capability - or we do it on a cruder device - perhaps cruder that the ones used in the edit. M Mastering and Grading when done by professionals with experience can improve things. When done by amateurs, my belief is that the process can be destructive. Even worse are the people who clearly don't understand it dictating use on the wrong kit. I suppose there is the point that if the viewers will mainly be watching it on a phone then grading for them, using a phone could be appropriate. I think it's probably bollocks!

[Pete Cofrancesco]

Grading on a phone. lol I shouldn't laugh because I'm working on a budget dance film and they wanted and inexpensive gimbal so I'm using my iphone 12 with the dji osmo. They needed something small, light and easy to use, to run around in the middle of dance sets. It works well for that purpose. I'm using FilmicPro and paid a little extra for the ability to film in 10bit log. I've found despite using log there isn't a big difference mainly due to it's a phone with tiny sensor.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh that's interesting, I haven't seen footage in 10 log on a tiny sensor before. Why does the tiny sensor make less of a difference in terms of log quality?

[Brian Drysdale]

Probably because the photosites on the phone sensor are so small the sensor has a limited dynamic range.

[Paul R Johnson]

I had a gimbal for my GoPro and want that impressed but when I read the dji spec on the ronin s I realised my JVC100 would just fit on it, I bought one and I’ve kept the camera on it now semi permanently and despite the weight it works really well. The battery means I don’t have a full range of movement but I can work around that. The GoPro and the JVC both on 1080 look so different. I bought one of those silly cheap Chinese gopros and it’s 4K image on the dinky sensor looks impressive until you realise the dynamic range is quite squashed. I guess this is the same issue?

[Donald McPherson]

I think this is a case of DeJaVue
https://www.dvinfo.net/forum/techniq...-director.html